Embed

Download:

Also available on:

September 2009 marks 400 years since Henry Hudson sailed into New York Harbor and up the Hudson River, almost to what is now Albany, performing detailed reconnaissance of the Hudson Valley region. This video, a Google Earth flyover integrated with historic maps, shows what the Rutgers Farm area looked like 400 years ago compared to today. It belongs to the exhibition "Mapping New York's Shoreline," on view through June 2010.

This video was produced using cutting-edge mapping technology developed collaboratively by staff of The Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division and the Digital Experience Group of The New York Public Library and by Entropy Free LLC. Historical maps, cited below, from NYPL collections have been digitally stretched onto a virtual globe using the toolkit available to the public at maps.nypl.org. The video was scripted using Google Earth Pro and composited using Final Cut Pro.

John Montresor. A Plan of the City of New-York & Its Environs…. London, 1775. The Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division, Lawrence H. Slaughter Collection.

John Bute Holmes. Map of the Rutger’s Farm as It Existed in 1784, Accurately Made from Reliable Data. New York, 1874. The Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division.

William Perris. Maps of the City of New York. New York, 1857. The Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division.

Matthew Dripps. Sheet 4 from: Plan of New York City, from the Battery to Spuyten Duyvil Creek. New York, 1867. The Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division.